On this day in 1796, President George Washington completed the final draft of his farewell address, in which he said that he would step down after his second term. In doing so, he set a precedent for incumbents that held until 1940, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt ran for a third term.

Two days later, the 6,084-word document, addressed to “friends and citizens,” ran in David Claypoole’s American Daily Advertiser. It was titled: “The Address of General Washington To The People of The United States on his declining of the Presidency of the United States.”

It was not widely known at the time that Washington was in poor health; he died in 1799. The release of Washington’s political bombshell purposely coincided with the ninth anniversary of the adoption of the first draft of the U.S. Constitution in 1787.

Alexander Hamilton, the nation’s first treasury secretary and an aide to Washington during the Revolutionary War, wrote much of the address. Hamilton, however, remained faithful to Washington’s literary style. He wrote the document from scratch after he and Washington had rejected an alternate version that had been penned by James Madison and admired by Hamilton’s rival, Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson.

In addition to laying out his hopes for America’s future, Washington’s farewell address called for an end to partisan politics. It stoutly maintained that his decision not to run for a third term was in the best interests of the country.

In desiring the “shade of retirement,” Washington wrote, “I have ... [already] contributed towards the organization and administration of the government the best exertions of which a very fallible judgment was capable.”

To this day, the address is read aloud on the Senate floor on or near Washington’s birthday.

SOURCE: “A SACRED UNION OF CITIZENS: GEORGE WASHINGTON’S FAREWELL ADDRESS AND THE AMERICAN CHARACTER,” BY MATTHEW SPALDING AND PATRICK J. GARRITY (1996)